Table Of ContentSociolinguistics of Style and Social Class in Contemporary Athens
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Volume 57
Sociolinguistics of Style and Social Class in Contemporary Athens
by Irene Theodoropoulou
Sociolinguistics of Style
and Social Class
in Contemporary Athens
Irene Theodoropoulou
Qatar University
John Benjamins Publishing Company
Amsterdam / Philadelphia
TM The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of
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the American National Standard for Information Sciences – Permanence
of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ansi z39.48-1984.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Theodoropoulou, Irene, author.
Sociolinguistics of Style and Social Class in Contemporary Athens / Irene
Theodoropoulou.
p. cm. (Discourse Approaches to Politics, Society and Culture, issn 1569-9463 ; v. 57)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Greek language, Modern--Variation. 2. Greek language, Modern--Social aspects.
3. Popular culture--Greece--Athens. 4. Sociolinguistics--Greece--Athens.
I. Title.
PA1050.T44 2014
306.44--dc23 2014020749
isbn 978 90 272 0648 0 (Hb ; alk. paper)
isbn 978 90 272 6970 6 (Eb)
© 2014 – John Benjamins B.V.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, by print, photoprint, microfilm, or any
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John Benjamins Publishing Co. · P.O. Box 36224 · 1020 me Amsterdam · The Netherlands
John Benjamins North America · P.O. Box 27519 · Philadelphia pa 19118-0519 · usa
Table of contents
Acknowledgements ix
List of tables xi
List of figures xii
List of diagrams xiii
Transcription conventions xiv
Introduction 1
chapter 1
Contextualizing style and identity in socio-cultural linguistics 7
1.1 Style, genre, and identity 7
1.2 “Style resources and contextualization” model 8
1.3 “Identities in interaction” model 12
1.4 Style as identity-contextualization mechanism 13
1.4.1 Why does style construct identity? 15
1.4.2 When and where does style construct identity? 22
1.4.3 How does style construct identity? 25
chapter 2
Investigating style and identity in contemporary urban society 35
2.1 Methodology 35
2.1.1 Linguistic ethnography 35
2.1.2 Digital ethnography 36
2.1.3 Popular culture ethnography 37
2.1.4 Key issues in triangulating methods
in socio-cultural linguistics 38
2.2 Data 38
2.2.1 Data from participants 38
2.2.2 Data from popular culture 46
2.3 Concluding remarks 53
vi Sociolinguistics of Style and Social Class in Contemporary Athens
chapter 3
Athenian suburban speech and stylistic representations
in Greek popular culture 55
3.1 Introduction 55
3.2 Discourse as a system of style representation 56
3.3 Formation of genres of Greek popular culture 57
3.4 Northern and western suburban speech style
and social class representations 59
3.4.1 Sociolinguistic resources 60
3.4.2 Communicative competence 79
3.4.3 Performativity 85
3.5 Style, social class and indexicality in popular culture 95
3.6 Concluding remarks 98
chapter 4
Athenian suburbanites’ double-voiced performances as identity work 99
4.1 Introduction 99
4.2 Stylization 101
4.3 Parody 102
4.4 Identifying instances of double-voiced speech 103
4.5 Social action 104
4.6 Stylized social actions 107
4.6.1 Denaturalization 107
4.6.2 Irony 113
4.6.3 Alazony 121
4.7 Parody as mocking 127
4.8 Double voicing identity and indexicality 135
4.9 Concluding remarks 139
chapter 5
Metapragmatic accounts of Athenian suburbanite social classes 141
5.1 Introduction 141
5.2 Sociolinguistic meta-language on social class 143
5.3 Social classes and genres 147
5.4 New-poor and nouveau-riche 149
5.5 Middle class and wage-earners 167
5.6 G700 183
5.7 Indexicalities in the VP-DP discourse 190
5.8 Concluding remarks 193
Table of contents vii
chapter 6
Towards a holistic approach to style 195
Postscript: Social class and style in a financial crisis context 201
Appendixes 203
Glossary of the main theoretical notions used in the book 217
References 221
Index 235
Acknowledgements
I am most grateful to the people, who enthusiastically accepted to participate in
this study and they shared trivial aspects of their lives with me. The help of my
friends Manolis Polychronides, Karolos Gavriiloglou, Evgenia Papaioannou, Nota
Pantzou and Dimitris Adamopoulos with the daunting task of recruitment has
been immense. Special thanks go to Maria Giannaki, Myrto Malamou and Elia
Kostopoulou, who have also helped me in the design of the study in their own
peculiar way.
My gratitude goes also to the institutions that have funded various stages of my
research: the Foundation for Education and European Culture (Ίδρυμα Παιδείας
και Ευρωπαϊκού Πολιτισμού) and its President, Mr. Nikolaos Trihas, the Greek
State Scholarships Foundation (IKY), the Alexander S. Onassis Public Benefit
Foundation, and the King’s College Graduate School for sponsoring my trip to
Stanford to attend the LSA Summer Institute 2007, where lots of the ideas found
in the book were conceived.
The excerpts from popular literature books that are found in Chapters 3 and 5
are used here with the kind permission of the following publishers, whom I would
like to acknowledge: Ekdoseis Melani, Ekdotikos Organismos Livani, Ekdoseis
Kedros, and Ekdoseis Topos.
Over the years, I have had the privilege of interacting with various scholars,
whose ideas have helped me shape my arguments found in this book: Devyani
Sharma, Ben Rampton, Roxy Harris, Jannis Androutsopoulos, Marina Terkourafi,
Jo Angouri, Reem Bassiouney and Emma Moore.
Many thanks also go to the participants of RWLL and Modern Greek semi-
nar at King’s College London (especially to my friends Dimitris Kitis, Valentina
Christodoulou, Stavri ioannidou, Nikolas Kakkoufa, Nayia Kamenou and Sarah
Ernst), to whom initial analyses of some of the data found here were presented. In
addition, thanks are due to the audiences in the following conferences: Revisiting the
‘Urban’ and the ‘Rural’: Spatial Representations and Practices, the 9th and the 10th
ICGL, ICLaVE 5, Sociolinguisticsfest 2008, the Arizona Linguistics & Anthropology
Symposium, the Sociolinguistics Symposia 17 and 18, and NWAV 39.
My interest in linguistics was given birth at the Philology Department of the
University of Athens, and it was consolidated into sociolinguistics at the University
of Vienna and at the LSA Summer Institutes 2005 and 2007. I would like to express
